The invention commences from the art known in British Patent Specification No. 1474049 (Leitz) and a paper by Rassudova and Gerasimov published in Optical Spectroscopy 14,215 (1963). This art shows three grating interference structures which in practical forms are reduced to two grating structures by making one of the gratings reflective. Moire bands are generated and examination of these bands enables the magnitude and direction of relative movement between the two gratings to be obtained. The present invention aims to provide very high resolution and relaxed alignment tolerances using fine gratings typically having a pitch of 40 .mu.meters. The Moire bands are examined by photodetectors which for accuracy should see the same scanning field. It is therefore desirable to use focal plane detectors and to use diffraction orders -1, 0, +1.
It is therefore necessary to get phase separation between the diffraction orders detected by the detectors. In the specification of Leitz, one grating is tilted relative to the other in order to provide differential spacing between the gratings. The main disadvantage of this system is that the magnitude of the phase separation or offset depends largely on the gap between the two gratings. For fine pitch gratings (eg 8 .mu.meters) this gap may be of the order of tens of .mu.meters, and a small change in the separation may lead to an unacceptable change in relative phase. The invention aims to provide an alternative means and method for obtaining phase offset or separation which does not suffer from the disadvantage of Leitz.